


KH Drabble Collection

by yo_yo_san



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Manipulation, Mental Instability, Murderous Urges, Organization XIII - Freeform, Other, Post-Game(s), Pre-Organization XIII, Sad, Self-Mutilation, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-01
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:18:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2044002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yo_yo_san/pseuds/yo_yo_san
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bunch of very short (between 100-500 word) Kingdom Hearts fics, originally posted to the kh-drabble lj community between 2006-2010. Posted in approximate order of writing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Premonitions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Demyx, preparing for battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Challenge 78: Tidying Up

He put his things away more carefully than usual. He had his marching orders, could still hear the Superior's crushed velvet voice echoing in his head, and yet... And yet. He had met Roxas -- it _was_ Roxas, he could see him glowering out of the angry blue eyes of the unknowing stranger -- once and survived. (Tell yourself the truth, Demyx: had met him and run away, mission only loosely called complete, too frightened of the red shining blur that had nearly chopped him to bits.) He wasn't certain that he could survive a second meeting.

He folded a piece of sheet music, stolen from an unwary Muse in the Coliseum, making certain that it was properly tucked in its sleeve before laying it gently into the drawer. He had a strange feeling about this mission. When he closed his eyes, he could visualize nothing so clearly as a glinting metal blade readying for a fatal thrust, a paralyzing premonition that made his hands shake in fear.

Was he being set up for failure this time, after his previous dismal performance? Did it matter? He held no power within the Organization; all he could do was choose the manner of his disposal -- either at the hands of the Superior, bent and twisted into one of his own Dancers or one of the sad little Dusks, or at the hands of Roxas, beaten and brutalized by the flashing Keyblade.

Better a bang than a whimper, he thought. Better to look Roxas in the eye and smile, full of memories of this place, of the white walls and the thrones and knowing that I was better than something.

"I wasn't just any nobody, I was someone's Nobody." His voice startled him a little, as much for the strangled note of improbable tears as the sheer sound of it in the silence.

He put his things away very carefully, knowing without wanting to know that he would not see them again, and wanting, without knowing what he wanted, to think that whoever tore apart his room, whether they cared about him or not, would see how neatly it had been kept and remember him.


	2. Lunatic Pandora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AU impression in twelve parts of Saïx before he was Saïx. Each part is 100 words + title.  
> (written well before BBS was released, so I called him Aïs instead of Isa.)

I. they call you names you call yourself

To the people of the city he is Outcast Aïs who walks the streets at night screaming curses, drowning in prophetic dreams and strange obsessions; he is someone to avoid, to pity, to be wary of.

To the doctors of the hospital, he is Crazy Aïs who hears whispered voices on the wind and in his head, voices that will not be silenced, no matter how many pills they shove down his throat.

To himself he is Mad Aïs, one who has seen the future of his world, of all worlds and suffers alone because no-one else cares to believe.

\--

II. your pain saves us from our own

He dreamed every night from his childhood, dreams of shadows, emptiness, and the tattered sound of hearts ceasing to beat; dreams from which he woke sobbing, screaming, clawing at his head and chest.

In time, his parents turned from him in fear and sadness, leaving him to cold-eyed doctors, letting them sate their hunger to create certainty from the unknown on him. They found no answers to his nightmares, and so merely prescribed useless medications. He laughed, then wept, knowing that they, too, would be soon consumed by their own appetite for darkness. The pills he vomited into the trash.

\--

III. twice-cursed

The moon both consoled and terrified him. He could not sleep at night, so he wandered, staring at the sky. Its eye rested heavy on him, as cold and yellow as his own, and his skin became moon-burned and scarred from his battles with the visions that boiled in his head.

During the day he would lie restlessly in whichever dark corner he had sought refuge, desperate for sleep but unable to allow it to come without a fight. He wished then for the cool glow of the moon, imagining that it might soothe away the ache behind his eyes.

\--

IV. wounds outside mirror those within

He slashed his face with a knife one night in a desperate attempt to excise the dreams from his head, and the resultant cross-shaped wound gave the world another reason to shun him. He found it comforting, a sign that the shards of prophecy warring in his mind were real enough to cut their way through his skin.

By that time, his visions were no longer confined only to sleep – he saw them almost constantly from the corners of his eyes, cruel fragmentary hallucinations of men in bloodstained white coats and endlessly hungry shadowed figures creeping through emptied city streets.

\--

V. cassandra’s dilemma

He tried to warn the lord of the land. He approached his shining bastion of scientific research, hands carefully held away from his pockets and as neatly turned out as he was capable of being, desperate to tell them to what their research would lead. He was turned away kindly, with some food and a strained smile. Ansem the Wise did not care for such people, being solidly rooted in the definable world. Prophets and diviners held no place in his land, though they must be tolerated for the sake of their madness, and he would not accept their counsel.

\--

VI. counting coup

The disappearances came as no surprise to him, and if anyone had cared to ask, he could have told them where their family members had gone – into the lowest levels of the castle, into secret rooms full of strange machines and a slowly spreading pool of darkness. He’d been dreaming the future for longer than he could remember, and now was slowly understanding his part in it. It was a mark of special cruelty that the dreams had revealed the method by which they would end, and a mark of his madness that he was prepared to pay the cost.

\--

VII. fate has chosen you for a task

His chance came only after the population of the city had been decimated by the crawling hearteaters that his nightmares told him had been born from the research of those in the castle. He made his way there slowly, trusting in the unwanted knowledge that he could not fail in this one unholy quest. Finding a way to the deepest basements was difficult, but blind luck and a large sword pulled from a crest above a mantelpiece were on his side. At last he stood in a too-familiar hallway; stood, shivering and weeping blindly, knowing that his fate waited nearby.

\--

VIII. wander by mistake

The final door in the corridor stood slightly ajar, and when he touched it, it swung open noiselessly. He expected the room to stink of blood, to be full of research equipment, but there was only a swirling greenredblueblack maw that hurt his eyes to look at. He froze, uncertain – this was not a room he had seen in his dreams. This was somewhere he was not supposed to be – somewhere nobody was supposed to be.

He stumbled backwards, reeling. The starving shadows outside reached out to catch him with quivering talons. He hefted the sword in desperation, suddenly afraid.

\--

IX. finality, the breath of storms

Their claws are cold, slicing gashes in both flesh and soul as he tries to escape, howling in impotent fury. It is too late to discover that he does not want to follow this path. They sink impossible fangs into his chest, shredding away his shirt and skin to reach his heart. He is drowning in pain, still weakly struggling to lift his useless weapon, when they drag him to the floor.

There is a tearing, then a rapturous gibbering that grows louder as the beat of his heart grows softer, further away – distant thunder being swallowed by the storm.

\--

X. the wheel turns too quickly

He falls, his body stretching and warping in the darkness; losing its shape, form, and function. He fights it, finding unknown strength from somewhere deep inside his mind, strength enough to recoil from the void, to hold fast to the human form he took for granted would always be his.

He howls into the nothing, refusing to fade.

Unknown time passes as he holds on for (could it be called?) life, until suddenly there is rain and cold and bare stone under his knees, and a man in a long black coat stands before him, holding out one gloved hand.

\--

XI. follow without compromise

His name is Xemnas, and he names himself Superior. He says:

“Aïs? He is gone. You are Saïx. Number seven.”

The hollow man rolls the sound of his name in his mouth, considering it. It suits him, he decides. He touches the scar between his eyes, thinner now, just lines rather than heavy gashes. He remembers what he was, but it is distant, lacking reality. He shakes his head.

Something still breathes heavily within him, some remnant of his former madness. He doesn’t know how he will walk this path yet, with no unyielding guide to tell him the future.

\--

XII. the hanged man

The first time he sleeps and wakes, with nothing in between but unknowing blackness, he wakes screaming, as Aïs did in childhood. The dreams are gone, and in their place is an empty aching nothing that begs to be filled. When he has woken fully, he begins to laugh.

This is what Aïs wanted all his life. His dreams, all of them, have come true. But he, he is Saïx, and there is something that he wants _now_ , so desperately it brings his lunacy back to him: to feel warmth, to feel moonlight on his skin, to own a heart.


	3. Holograph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axel & Larxene, PWP-ish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Challenge 83: Reflection

Before Roxas, they sometimes used to fuck like cats in heat. Loud, messy, teeth locked in matching snarls and claws bared, stripped of their sheaths of black leather. It was desperate, it was hopeless, but anything, anything was better than facing the endless aching boredom alone.

It wasn't entirely true, but it seemed that together, they found a certain camaraderie that all but certain elders of The Organization lacked. They could sit in the library loudly exchanging foul pleasantries with hooded eyes and know that everyone else thought them harsh and mad.

Sometimes it even started there. She'd begin with a sideways glower, and he'd return a toothy smile. They'd move on into casual insults, shifting rapidly into sly threats and insinuations. It would end with her hand on his arm, digging into the wiry muscle, leading him to her room. They would strip swiftly, neither particularly interested in the details of the other's body, and slide together, limbs tangling, losing all the catlike grace and flame-bright elegance that marked them in the outside world.

She liked to be on top, in control, whisper-blue eyes wide and blank as mirrors; reflecting pools with no secrets to divulge. His eyes, burning like acid, closed only when he wanted to thrust a little harder, to push a little deeper into her eternally unyielding body. He would snap at her, aiming for an ear and catching only a mouthful of fine blonde hair. If she caught him by surprise, her nails would leave stumbling lines of blood across his skin, so he learned to hold her wrists wide, his fingers leaving ugly bruises that she'd laugh off afterwards as she pulled on her gloves. Without living heartbeats to help them find a rhythm, they used her bed, slamming it against the wall over and over again until they came screaming, bodies dripping with cold sweat. Their mouths never met in anything so prosaic as a kiss, instead whispering soft vulgarities that sometimes touched lips and teeth and tongues, but more often drifted into the stagnant air.

They would dress in silence, each outwardly indifferent to what the other might be thinking. Only shifting cloth and slowly purring zippers threatened the silence, followed by the shallow hiss of a closing door as he left.

He knew that it had been a temporary arrangement, something to kill time until something more interesting appeared to pique his curiosity. There were no bonds between them strong enough to survive the arrival of a boy with more mysteries locked in his head than either of them could claim existed in either of their lives. Still, he reflected, knowing that he had sent her to wage her final battle, the comfortable stain of betrayal lingering on his thin lips, there might have been something there to regret.


	4. internalize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They survived, but not unchanged. (Sora/Riku/Kairi)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the 2006 Secret Santa exchange

The memories still burn him, even though he moves from day to day with a smile painted lovingly on his face. He knows he killed in the name of light, he knows he is forgiven, but some part of him will never want to forget the lessons he learned. There is an equivalency there he doesn't understand, but it doesn't matter – all that matters is what he imagines to be true, and how he startles when two pairs of wondering hands touch his shoulders, pulling him nearer to their warmth.

Riku holds Kairi's hands with tenderness and care, imagining that the pain that she feels is tied somehow to his errors. He is wrong, but it doesn't change the way he reacts to her tears, to her nightfears, to the sorrow that drifts behind her eyes as soon as the lone cherry tree on the island blooms in spring. He feels a little left out – his soul never went wandering without his consent, and he faintly resents the times when he sees them sitting quietly together, and knows that it isn't Sora he's seeing touching Naminé's cheek.

She is too careful of their feelings, holding their hearts in her mouth even as they kiss her, one after the other, and sometimes each other, hesitant and vague, testing the waters a thousand times, always afraid to dive. She wants to protect them from each other, from herself, from the strangling paths that they've already followed to their ruinous ends. She sees more than they want her to, and wishes she could have been there at the end, to see the sky so silent and black and know that they had each other, at least ...and she won't follow that thought through because it makes her cry _every time_.

Together at last, no more nameless threats, no more Heartless, no more dreadful men in black coats, they are silent, sometimes afraid to look into each other's eyes, but willing to try, always once more, until they get it right.


	5. In the storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle, trapped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Challenge 102: Crash

_Lost, as if in a unrelenting nightmare, she has forgotten how to breathe -- there is too much fear and anger in the room._

There once was a prince of her acquaintance, a man with heavy blue eyes and a voice that growled basso profundo along her skin when he chose to speak. He loved her to distraction, but never in the ways she wanted him to. He would only remember that she was small and fragile and dream that she was constructed of glass and parchment pages and turn from her before his claws could curl around her wrists, before his hot breath could do more than ghost against her shoulders.

He had been alone for too long, and though he greeted her as warmly as he could and bid her welcome in his castle, the walls muttered at night, telling her that she must stay, there was no choice if he was to be saved, and it chilled her to the soul. She had never wanted anything more than to make her own choices.

A man arrived then, at first kind and helpful, setting another set of footsteps to clicking along the many lonely corridors. His eyes were the color of violets, the ones she remembered blooming shyly in the cottage garden, and his voice reminded her of the soft accents of her village and yet -- she could not accept his counsel as her prince did. He seemed too cold, too well-suited to this palace of storms and shadows.

Her fears proved true as the weeks wore on, silk and cyanide whispers in the night telling tales of lonely tears she had thought private, luring her prince into believing her somehow faithless.

 _She shifts uneasily, the gloved hands tangled in her hair holding her still and keeping her quiet._ This is wrong. _The beast tearing the room apart behind her is no longer her prince. The man holding her down, urging him to make her the target of his wrath, is no friend to anyone._

To this end? Is this what he wanted all along? _She considers carefully, afraid of and yet_ wanting _the claws she hears rending the paintings to shred her dress, her flesh, to reach for her and tear her and pierce her heart so that she might die for love of him. She stares up at Xaldin, at his eyes like flowers and his hair like snakes and his whispers in the dark, and tries -- and fails -- to hate._

_He holds her still and they wait for the beast, her prince, trapped in the darkest trespasses of his own mind, to come to them. Though she has forgotten how to breathe, as an ancient mahogany writing desk shatters against the wall and the growling grows louder, she smiles._


	6. To be beauty.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle, fearful but brave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Challenge 132: Worth it

The wind roars through the skeleton trees around the castle, carrying dead leaves spiraling around the towers, tearing at them until they are nothing more than shadows settling on the gargoyles. He waits, eyes on the rose (thornless and glowing, pulsing in time to a heartbeat he cannot hear), for a moment more suitable to his purposes to strike. The lord and master of this stony prison paces the corridors, madness shuttering his eyes and turning his claws inward to gouge his rage into his velvet finery and fur and flesh; he leaves in his wake blood-spotted tatters and tufts to join the ruined tapestries in shreds on the floor.

She is in her room, shameful tears blooming on her cheeks, hoping that this will be over quickly. Whether he kills her or loves her; whether he chooses to succumb to the poisons that Xaldin feeds him (drop by drop, from a golden cup) or to resist and accept her truths, she knows that no matter the pain, no matter the horrors that might await, it has been worth the cost, every drop of blood and bruise and tear, to see his eyes gentle, his paws soft as a kitten's; to dance with him for just one night, to be beautiful and loved.

She holds that night in her mind as his claws click closer to her door.


	7. Awash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some nights Kairi wakes, awash in a sea of tears and sweat that she cannot share with either of the men with whom she shares everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Challenge 152: Too Late

Some nights Kairi wakes, awash in a sea of tears and sweat that she cannot share with either of the men with whom she shares everything else. She feels compelled to run to the water, to plunge herself waist-deep in the warm salt sting of the ocean, not to cleanse her body, but to remind herself that she is here, she is now, she is alive. She returns to her bed damp and gasping for breath, only to squeeze her eyes shut and count heartbeats until first light.

The dream is always the same: beach and bleak black sky, sluggish waves beating a heavy tempo against the cold sand, twisted revenant trees, and two boys (because they were, then) sitting together, each supporting the other despite wounds bleeding through bandages tied with clumsy fingers. They talk, but she can never hear their voices.

Then the waves cease churning, and the boys fall like cut-string puppets, their bodies fading to shadows and silence. The scene is still but for a bottle floating in the water, drifting back into the dead sea, the note inside unread.


	8. Windburn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xaldin contemplates his final mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the kh-drabble Secret Santa exchange 2008

This castle reigns over the forest, a dark-fanged fortress full of shadows and unspoken words. Outside, the winds howl, spending their fury against the turrets and gargoyles, and inside the Beast stalks his halls, faithless and wild. He is my project, my target, if you will: a thing to be transformed, his passion for her turned to mindless, heartless rage.

He thinks of himself as half a man. I will make him one in truth. Tear him into one and the other, heart and body, and then he will know the misery of drawing a breath that tastes of silence.

\--

She walks in light. Candles, mostly -- the toy candelabra that serves as maître d' for this house dogs her, hoping she will break curses she is never allowed to understand, seconded by the clock-butler (officious wretch) who hopes that my hold over their Lord will fade, if only she will look kindly upon him, if only her heart would melt.

I see her glow, and almost wish that I had been tasked with breaking her. Her skin would surely taste of cream and honey and library dust, and her tears would be as lovely as the blood-stained fingers of dawn.

\--

I draw them together with finely-strung webs, using their weaknesses (his wrath, her fear) as weapons. I set him on edge, honing the fine killing rage to a perfect sheen and sharpness, urging him to greater extremes of abuse and anger, knowing that her heart, the heart of a Princess, will never blacken and wither. I watch the cursed rose, waiting for each petal to droop and fall, knowing that with each moment that passes his chances for redemption waste away. I stand exultant on the ramparts of this castle, sending storms careening through the halls.

And I am never bored.


	9. Those Lacking Conscience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> III, IX, XII - Those who seem to enjoy their existence more than most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Challenge 206: Storm

Those lacking conscience:

I: Xaldin, the beast in a cage of wind

He is methodical and exact in everything he does. When fighting, he takes advantage of the swirling currents of air to send a spear (or two, or three. He doesn't mind a little unfair in his war) at an unwary back; takes careful note of the terrain and won't stand and fight until he's sure his opponent is in a weaker position. His hands never tremble, his shoulders never shake. He is sure and powerful and in control.

What he loves, what raises the storm in his blood, is to watch others _lose_ control -- it brings a catch to his breath to see dreams shattering while he stands behind and whispers the wind through the cracks in the walls. He wants, and wants in the most carnal of ways, to watch as love sours and care festers.

He is a perverse man, and knows it, and does not care.

\--

II: Larxene, savage in so many ways

There is a glory in fighting, in killing, in the electric sound of flashing blades shearing away another life, that she has never found anywhere else. She speeds through her battles, sinking daggers deep into tender throats, smiling as the blood jets over her fingers; setting another victim jerking in a violated dance of lightning-seared flesh.

There is no room for doubt in her mind that this life is the superior one. She doesn't like to remember _before_. This is all there is. This is all she wants. The silence of the castle leaves her too much room to think, and so she leaves so she doesn't have to.

She laughs exultantly as the bodies fall around her like so many broken dolls. This is what she loves best.

\--

III: Demyx, the boy who didn't care

Drowning, he thinks, is sweet. He doesn't really like to fight, but seeing a life slowly draining out in a stream of little bubbles is pretty, almost worth the irritation of not right-now-and-all-the-time strumming his beloved sitar. He's got a name for her, because instruments are usually girls (not always, there might've been a guitar he sort-of remembers that he's pretty sure was named "Charlie", but that could be a girl's name so who knows?)

He's glad, after a fashion, that water is his element to control, that he can make pretty dancing girls to amuse himself with, and that those girls can also be deadly, can lose their forms and wash over people and buildings and animals and he _never has to get his hands dirty_. They just ...die.

And then he can return to his music, which is all he really wants.


	10. Nothing like the sun.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xemnas doing what he does best -- pontificating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: insomnia

Oh, the moon.

She floats above the castle, spinning slowly in the darkness, glittering through the constant rain -- the moon-that-is-not, growing each moment larger:

Kingdom Hearts.  
His heart.

He doesn't sleep anymore, can't be sure that it's something he needs. It doesn't matter. He doesn't eat either, and when one of his (he doesn't know what to call them. [lackeys? cronies? compatriots? subsidiaries? subjects? subordinates? ...friends?] Nothing seems right, not now that she has been born.) comes to him, bows low enough that the chains of their coats clink and jangle along the floor, imparts some new piece of trivia, some scattered snippet of information that they think he might find interesting, it's all he can do to tear his eyes away from the moon, to nod, to smile as though he cares about their work.

Saïx is the only one he can bear to look at for very long, and it is only because his eyes are the same color, burned yellow-white by her precious glow.

He still has a dim awareness that his plans are going awry, that even the Diviner is slipping out of his grasp, but it matters little. The most important part has been fulfilled, his most prized possession hangs before him, his heart made real and true and living and whole again.


	11. Twelve Nights and a Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlocking sentences for each member of Organization XIII.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the kh-drabble Secret Santa 2009

I: The first night without a heart was a joy, the fifth, a sorrow; after the fiftieth, it became a nightmare. That was when he began to devise his plans -- restore the heart to contain its power; merge, and be reborn.

II: The power was almost irrelevant, and after a point, he was just playing a vast game of follow-the-leader, watching to see how and where the steps of the dance would fail. He had no faith in his erstwhile Superior. That had been burned out with his heart.

III: He had no faith to lose, and his past ceased to matter the moment he woke, gasping for air he was not certain he needed. But the power that filled him, the freedom from conscience and humanity, made it worth far more than the cost.

IV: Humanity had never been his concern, though, he reflected somewhat later, his life might have been very different had it been. He only wanted to know the hidden things -- the secrets contained in every man, woman, and child; the breath that escaped as death took hold; the effort needed to create new life from nothing.

V: All of his strength meant nothing, in the end. He had no ability to protect the smallest things from the great emptiness that consumed hearts and souls and bodies alike.

VI: His mind was his treasure, his loyalty to the cause, his armor -- but there was a vinegary emptiness to it all that wore away his purpose, his sense of self, rendering his life a constant refrain of identical results and weary continuations of past actions. His mind wasted, his youth frozen, never aging, but never growing.

VII: There was nothing wasted, no moment he did not use to its full potential, at first for the plans laid by Xemnas, and then for his own purpose. He kept his own council, trusting no one but himself.

VIII: Trusting, that wasn't a word he'd use for himself. Not anymore. Now he was a list of tricks up sleeves, of secrets and plans and destructive impulses. He had made friends, managed to form new connections, and all of them had been burned away, stolen, vanished into the darkness.

IX: There was nothing to tempt him about the darkness; he'd joined half as a lark, and half because the alternative frightened him more. Sure, there was something to be said for power, but when power came hand-in-hand with constant work making people miserable? Still, when it was you or them, it was far easier to be selfish than thoughtful.

X: Your history is what makes you selfish, he thinks. There's a goal in there somewhere, some game you're running that the rest of us aren't allowed to see, but it's what _was_ that makes you tick. He holds tightly to his hand, hoping that he might, at least, survive, even if he doesn't understand why they persist after loss after loss after crushing defeat. Hope, however, is swift becoming a lost cause. The odds are simply too long.

XI: There is no defeat that could encompass his arrogance, his crumbling hold on his rebellion, his refusal to admit that all he had worked for was fading. It was no bad plan; he was no poor imitation of the Superior he rebuked. He could have had the world, but his fingers slipped. The witch escaped him, and with her, his heart.

XII: She had escaped her history, found herself a new one, a new _everything_ , and would follow anyone who showed her enough cause. First the man with golden eyes and hollow chest, then the one with graceful words and a poisoned smile. Everything was simpler once she realized she no longer needed to pretend to care.

XIII: He was born from nothing and remembered nothing, not even the simplest of things: his name, his face, his sense of self. An empty shell of a child, waiting to be filled with memories and connections and knowledge. He took no joy in the learning once he learned the truth of his situation.


	12. Longest Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axel & Xion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Challenge 249: Candlelight

There is a thing that glows, she thinks, though she can't really give it a name. Something behind his eyes, something like memories, like touching the flames and pulling your fingers away because you now know the meaning of 'hot' -- coals of emotion, embers of feeling. Maybe all those things, and maybe none of them. She doesn't know what she sees, not exactly.

He stares at her, at her newness, her frail frame shaking and collapsing and wonders how long it'll last. How long will her construction hold up to the paces it's being put through? There's just one more fight left in her, he thinks. Just one, and then she'll fade away. She'll be gone by morning.

Her hands struggle against his, fingers flickering pale under the light of the strangest moon. Tonight is the longest night in some worlds, he tells her, voice barely a tickle in her ear. Tonight they light candles and pray for the safe return of the sun, wish and hope with all their little hearts (and his voice is a hiss like hot stone) that their lives will continue tomorrow, unbroken by the darkness.

And she thinks, we're hoping for that, too.


End file.
